Advances in computing and networking technology have made new forms of media content possible. For example, virtual reality media content is available that may immerse viewers (or “users”) into interactive virtual reality worlds that the users may experience by directing their attention to any of a variety of things being presented in the immersive virtual reality world at the same time. For example, at any time during the presentation of the virtual reality media content, a user experiencing the virtual reality media content may look around the immersive virtual reality world in any direction with respect to both a horizontal dimension (e.g., forward, backward, left, right, etc.) as well as a vertical dimension (e.g., up, down, etc.), giving the user a sense that he or she is actually present in and experiencing the immersive virtual reality world.
For a user to experience an immersive virtual reality world, a backend server (e.g., a computing system operated by a virtual reality media content provider) may be used to stream data representative of the immersive virtual reality world to a media player device associated with the user over a network. In this configuration, the media player device may use the data to render content included within the immersive virtual reality world in substantially real time as the data is being streamed to the media player device.
Unfortunately, streaming data representative of all the content of the immersive virtual reality world (or, at least, streaming data representative of all the content in a uniform, high resolution) may be an inefficient use of resources and/or may present other technical challenges. For example, streaming data representative of the entire immersive virtual reality world (e.g., in a high resolution) may utilize significant resources of the backend server providing the data, the media player device receiving the data, and/or the network carrying the data from the backend server to the media player device, even though only a relatively small portion of the data (i.e., data corresponding to content of the immersive virtual reality world in the direction the user is looking) is rendered at any given time by the media player device for experiencing by the user.